


Please don't be mad, but I accidentally hooked up with your teacher

by Khoshekh42



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Parents, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Eli has a daughter, Fluff, M/M, Thrawn is a high school teacher
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:20:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25980478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khoshekh42/pseuds/Khoshekh42
Summary: Eli is the single father of one high school student Lea Vanto, Thrawn is Lea's Cultural Geography teacher.Eli had never met Thrawn before, until he meets him at Lea's school's open house, and Eli realizes that Thrawn is the man he'd hooked up with the night before.He says he isn't going to let himself sleep with Thrawn again now that they know who each other are... but that was never going to actually work out for them.
Relationships: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Eli Vanto
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	Please don't be mad, but I accidentally hooked up with your teacher

Eli woke when the man lying next to him began to shift and stretch in the early glow of the morning sun, whose blue skin looked strangely green in the orange light. His head was beating heavily as he shifted himself, and he cursed his past self for not taking any precautions to prevent a hangover.

The other man had gotten out of bed, and Eli took a moment to admire the man’s physique, watching the way the musculature on his back stretched and squeezed as he pulled on pants.

“I apologize for kicking you out so soon.” The man said in slightly accented Basic, back still turned. “I must get to work at a fairly early hour.”

“You’re alright,” Eli winced at his own heavy accent, more pronounced in the early morning. “I should probably be heading home myself.”

The man was already fully dressed in a button down and tie even as Eli was barely slipping out of bed. Eli’s face heated as he saw the man’s eyes travel appreciatively down his body.

“You have nothing to be ashamed about.” He turned away to rummage through his drawer for socks, though Eli wondered if he was also doing it to make Eli feel more comfortable, “You are an attractive man.”

Eli’s blush just deepened, and he hurried to pull on last night’s clothes. _‘They smell like cheap booze,’_ He noted with embarrassment, _‘Lea’s never going to let me live this down.’_

Lea had been a blessing for Eli, though it’d been rough at the beginning. He’d been dating Suula for a couple months, and when she’d accidentally gotten pregnant, she’d left with the intentions of never coming back. She’d died in childbirth, and Eli had still been an emergency contact. Since Eli was the girl’s father, he’d gotten full custody of her.

Eli’s mother had been a miracle-worker. She and his father had come all the way from Lysatra to Coruscant to help with Lea. Eli had been way out of his depth, between the grief of losing someone he’d cared about, and having to take care of a baby on top of it.

But now, at seventeen, Lea was fairly self-sufficient, though Eli figured he should get home in time to send her off to school.

She’d been urging Eli to go out and meet new people for a while, and now when he’d finally gone out for a little bit of fun, he’d ended up getting completely smashed and hooking up with a man—whose name he’d never learned, and would now be heading back home in the classic walk of shame.

“I… enjoyed last night.” The man said suddenly, “I must admit, when I was dragged to a bar on a Thursday night, I didn’t expect to have… fun.” He said the last word with the air of a man who rarely experienced it. “I’m glad I was proven wrong.”

Eli smiled, feeling a little less embarrassed now that the other man had shown some of his own awkwardness. “I’m glad you were, too. That was more fun than I’ve had in a while.”

Eli finished getting dressed, and he could tell that the other man was ready to leave for work, so he left the house with little more than a ‘thanks’ after making sure he had all of his belongings.

Eli found an air taxi, fretting through the ride home that Lea would be mad at him.

His fears, however, were quelled when Lea, who’d been eating flatcakes at the dining table, turned to him and grinned.

“Great walk of shame, dad.”

Eli scoffed. “Don’t make this weird.”

“So…?” She drew out

“Lea! I said don’t make this weird.” The blush was coming back furiously.

“Ugh, I don’t want gory details, but like, y’know, did you have fun?”

The red on his cheeks stayed stubbornly where it was, “Yeah, it was… it was nice. He was nice.”

“Was he hot?”

“Eat your damn breakfast, Lea.”

Lea laughed, finishing off the last of her flatcakes before grabbing her backpack and heading towards the door—“Don’t forget that Mr. Thrawn wants all the parents there for open house after school. Three o’ clock!”

“Okay, love you, Lea, see you tonight!” Eli responded, even though the door had already been slammed shut.

He sighed, and sat down at the table, feeling older than he was. He wondered vaguely why Lea’s cultural geography teacher was so insistent that parents were to come to open house, since she was in her final year of school. Eli himself hadn’t even gone to open house the previous year per Lea’s request.

But she seemed to like her cultural geography teacher, and she appeared to be genuinely interested in having Eli there, so he would go.

First, though, he would take a nap and sleep off his hangover, setting an alarm for 2 P.M. just in case he slept that long.

Eli’s alarm did, in fact, wake him up. The combination of going to sleep late and having a hangover when he woke wasn’t a good one, and he ended up sleeping for almost seven hours.

His head was much better when he woke, though the insistent beeping of the alarm wasn’t helping.

He sat up, still slightly cotton-mouthed, dragging his hand through his hair, before shutting off the alarm and getting out of bed to take a shower.

He arrived at Lea’s school at exactly three o’ clock, and began going through the motions—heading first to Lea’s own first period, a math class. Lea joined him, and they spent the ten minutes allotted for the teacher to talk to them whispering back and forth about how easy the class was.

Lea’s second period wasn’t much better, her biology class was taught by a truly xenophobic man who Eli had heard plenty of horror stories about from Lea, despite it only being a month or so into the year. Eli spent that class exchanging glances with a Togrutan woman who seemed just as exasperated as he was.

Third period was fun, the Basic language and composition teacher was a highly energized woman who was younger than Eli, and who seemed excited to include parents in the discussion instead of just lecturing at them.

Fourth period was Lea’s band class, and Eli sat in the back with some of the other veteran band parents, who were all smiling fondly at the freshmen’s parents, who were all near the front asking all sorts of questions about the band program that could have easily been found on the band’s website. The director was answering the questions patiently, having been through this every year since he’d started. Eli and the others in the back couldn’t get mad at the ones asking questions, they all knew that _they’d_ been the ones asking the same questions back when their children had been freshmen.

Fifth period was a total disaster, the government teacher wasn’t even there, and all the kids were just rolling their eyes and explaining how much sense this made.

Sixth wasn’t nearly as boring as Lea had told him it would be—Eli figured it wasn’t the teacher’s fault, because she was trying to teach teenagers economics, and not even Eli had been interested in economics as a teenager.

Lea kept going on about Mr. Thrawn as they walked to her seventh period, about how he was so fascinating and that he’d managed to get her interested in so many different cultures.

They walked into the classroom, and Eli froze as he saw the man at the front of the room.

It was the man from that morning, from the night before.

_Oh_ kriff, _I slept with Lea’s teacher._

Panic washed over Eli, and Lea stopped a few steps ahead of him, turning around towards him, “Dad, come on.”

“I- I think I’m… ill?” Eli whispered.

Lea’s eyebrows scrunched, and she just looked at him, confused and a little concerned. “Dad, I need the grade, just tell him that you’re here at least.”

Eli vaguely debated running from the room.

But then Thrawn saw him, and Eli saw his eyes widen slightly, something that he probably wouldn’t have noticed, had his eyes not been glued to the man’s face.

Thrawn gave him a small nod and turned back to the parent that he had been talking to before he’d seen Eli.

Eli felt his ears burn, and as he continued staring at Lea’s teacher, he noticed a somewhat purple hue to the man’s normally blue ears.

“Dad. What are you doing? There’s a line behind you.”

Eli finally moved into the classroom, almost trance-like, staring wide-eyed at the ground.

“Are you okay?” Lea whispered to him as he sat in a chair near the back.

“Yeah, just felt… weird there for a second.” Eli knew his face was still bright red, so he just pulled his datapad out and started pretending to take notes.

In actuality, he messaged Dri, a band mom that was sitting two rows in front of Eli, playing dejarik on her datapad.

Eli- Hey, you know how I finally gave in to going out to a bar last night?

Dri- Yeah. Is something wrong?

Eli- Well I hooked up with a guy.

Eli saw Dri smirk back at him.

Dri- Nice going, Vanto. So, spill. What happened? Gimme details. Lord knows I need some excitement in my life after Zukti left.

Eli- No, I’m not giving you _details._ He was nice, though. But we never learned each other’s names.

Dri- Ooh, saucy!! Good for you.

Eli- Yeah no, it was a kriffing terrible idea.

Dri- Oh?

Eli- Well, I got here and the guy I hooked up with?

Eli- Apparently it was Thrawn.

At this, Dri turned back to look at Eli, mouth agape, and motioned for him to follow her.

They politely shuffled out of the room, Eli avoiding looking anywhere near Thrawn as the man continued talking about his late policy.

“What the fuck, Eli?” Dri hissed.

“It’s not like I knew who he was when I slept with him!” Eli defended himself. “All I knew was that he was hot and into me.”

“Fuckin’ hell.” Dri sighed. She paused, a strange look on her face, “Was he good?”

“That is literally _none_ of your business.” Eli’s face got warmer.

Dri smirked again, “He was, he definitely was.”

Eli rubbed his face, tired. “Listen, just… do I talk to him? Do I ignore it? Like what would I even _say_ to him?”

“Well I wouldn’t just ignore him, that seems like an awful idea. Things’ll just get awkward. What _I_ think you should do? Hit him up, have sex with him again.”

“That is the actual _last_ thing I’m going to do.”

The classroom door opened, Lea stood in the doorframe, and people were getting their things together behind her.

“Dad. What the hell?”

Even Dri had the sense to look sheepish, and actually shut her mouth for once.

“Sorry,” Eli apologized, “I just had to talk to Ms. Satchu about something. You ready to go?”

“Yeah, but Mr. Thrawn said he wanted to talk to you.”

Eli’s stomach dropped, and he felt the blood drain from his face. Dri snorted next to him.

“Have fun, Eli. Remember my advice.”

“Oh, you can take that idea and—” He broke off, barely remembering that his daughter was standing right there.

Lea was just laughing, “Don’t be mean to Ms. Satchu, she’s nice!”

“Yeah! I’m _nice_ , Eli!”

Eli scoffed as she left to find her own daughter.

He turned, nervous, towards Lea, “Do, uh, do you know why he wanted to see me?”

“God, dad, it’s like you think you’re the one in high school, and he’s the principal. Calm down.”

“Alright, fine.” With his heart beating heavily in his chest, he shuffled into the emptying classroom. Thrawn caught his eye, politely apologized and stepped away from his current conversation, and walked towards Eli.

Eli felt his heart beat faster in his chest, and he couldn’t fathom what Thrawn was about to say to him. Would he ask him to stay away? Would he just talk simply about Lea’s interest in the class? Would he shame him for going out on a school night when he had a daughter to think about?

Thrawn gave him a cool, well-mannered smile. “I wanted to say that your daughter is a delight to have in class.” His smooth voice washed over Eli like a river, relaxing him with the words. So he wasn’t about to bring up the previous night.

Eli gave Thrawn a goofy smile of his own, thankful for the opportunity to not talk about the… incident, but to instead just brag about his daughter—something he knew he could do for hours on end.

“She’s brilliant, yeah. She loves this class, y’know, she just goes on and on about how fascinating it is that someone could look at some Rodian art, and be able to figure out what their society is like. Sometimes she’ll bring her homework to me and ask me what I know about a civilization. With my brief background in the Navy, I met a few different cultures.” Eli gave a slight huff of laughter, “Not that I’m much help, I was mostly in supply.” As Eli began to realize how much he was rambling, he clenched his teeth and plastered a smile back on his face.

“I have a fairly extensive military background as well, although not with the republic’s military, with the military of my own people.” Thrawn almost seemed to be trying to make Eli more comfortable, which Eli definitely _didn’t_ think of as sweet…

And then, all of a sudden, the door shut, and they were the last ones in the room.

Thrawn sat down on his desk, peering at Eli as if looking into his soul. Eli felt the warmth creep back up into his face.

“I hope you don’t think of me as… unprofessional.” Thrawn said, the word didn’t even sound familiar in his mouth.

Eli blinked in surprise. “Unprofessional? I—why would I?”

“I did go to a bar on a Thursday night, get suitably drunk, and hook up with a man who—at the time—I had no idea of his name.”

“I mean, that’d be a little hypocritical of me, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Thrawn agreed, but seemed to choose his words carefully, “However, you are not a teacher by profession.”

“Still, I had my daughter at home.” Eli had no idea why he was trying to shift blame off of Thrawn and onto himself.

“True.” Thrawn conceded. “That doesn’t absolve me of all wrong-doing though.”

“I mean, I don’t see what’s wrong with it. I guess I didn’t really do anything wrong either, I think it was just kind of… a way to get out of our own lives for a while. Have some fun.”

“Fun… yes…” Thrawn considered this for a moment, and he pulled a small scrap of flimsy out of his desk drawer that he scribbled on for a moment before he handed it to Eli.

“My comm frequency. For if you find yourself in need to get out of your life for a time. To have some fun.” He echoed Eli’s words, looking straight into his eyes, face almost impassive.

Eli took the slip of flimsy, and he felt his mouth dry out. “Thanks. I just might take you up on that.” He said, just before his brain was able to catch up with his mouth. He turned and walked out towards the door.

“Then I hope to meet again, Eli Vanto.”

Eli’s face heated further, and he slipped out into the hall.

Lea was still waiting there, and she looked up to him from her spot on the floor. “What _happened_? You look guilty as hell.”

Eli shoved the piece of flimsy into his pocket before she could see what was on it.

“I’m fine, let’s just head home.” He let her lead the way back through the school and into the parking lot.

Since Lea had taken her own speeder to get herself to school, they drove separately.

Eli called up Dri and threw the comm on the seat next to him.

_“Hey, what’s up?”_ Her voice was staticky through the comm.

“Hey… So, I think I owe you an apology.”

_“Sure, that adds up. What for?”_ She teased.

“You’re alone?”

_“Yeah? Something wrong?”_ She sounded almost cautious.

“I think, well, I think I’m going to end up… _y’know_.”

_“As much as this pains me to say, Eli, I just can’t read minds.”_

Eli groaned. She was going to make him say it out loud. “I think I’m gonna have sex with Thrawn again.”

There was a beat from Dri. “Fuck _yes!_ Thank _you, Eli.”_

“Don’t—just, don’t.”

_“Sooo…. What happened?”_

Eli sighed as he sat at a stoplight, glancing around to the other people around him, wondering whether their lives were just as weird as his had just become. “He gave me his comm frequency. Said to call him if I wanted to, y’know. Have fun.”

She all but cackled at that. _“You are_ so _fucked, Eli.”_

Eli grinned at her choice of words, and couldn’t help but comment cheekily: “Well ain’t that the point?”

_“Now you’re getting it!”_ She sounded delighted. _“Now come on, please, I gotta hear what happened last night.”_

“Lord, Dri, you’re disgusting.” Eli rolled his eyes as he pulled up into his driveway behind Lea’s speeder.

Eli walked into the house after hanging up on Dri.

“Hey Lea. Got stopped at the light, sorry.”

“You’re good. Seriously, what did Mr. Thrawn tell you?”

Eli’s hand automatically went to his pocket where Thrawn’s comm frequency was. He felt his face heat up.

“Just wanted to say that he loved having you in class, make sure that I was alright after the whole feeling weird at the beginning of our time with him at open house.” Eli felt guilty lying, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand looking her in the eye and telling her that he’d slept with her teacher and was actively planning to do so again.

She didn’t quite seem to buy it, but she shrugged, “Oh, by the way, N’erra invited me to that new Zabrakian restaurant, so I’ll be gone for dinner.”

“Alright! Have fun.” Eli smiled at her before heading into his room, and pulling the flimsy out of his pocket, and texting Thrawn, who responded within a few minutes.

Eli- Hey it’s Eli

Thrawn- I apologize for the wait, I wasn’t expecting a text so soon.

Eli- You’re good, Lea’s heading out with a friend tonight if you wanted to meet up?

Eli took a shaky breath as he hit send, feeling somewhat like this was a turning point. His anxiety built up more and more as Thrawn didn’t answer. Until:

Thrawn- That sounds good. You know where I live. How does 7 o’clock sound?

Eli- Great. See you then!

Eli grinned, suddenly much more excited for the coming night.

Finally, once Lea had gone out with N’erra, Eli put out a note saying that he was out with a friend and not to wait up for him.

He pulled himself into clothes that were less professional than what he’d worn to the open house. He considered a short-sleeved button-down that he’d always thought looked good on him, but decided that it would be too difficult to get off in the heat of the moment.

He sat around anxiously waiting until six-thirty so he could leave without being obscenely early, using anything to distract himself with so that the time would pass faster. Although—as Eli soon found out—trying to read a book while checking the clock every thirty seconds wasn’t great for retaining anything from it, and he ended up reading the same page twelve times before giving up.

It was fifteen after when Eli gave in, and headed out on his speeder.

Twenty minutes later found Eli welcomed politely back into Thrawn’s home, and subsequently shoved against the nearest wall and kissed deeply.

And _oh,_ so _that_ was how the night was going to go.

Eli couldn’t find it in him to complain.


End file.
